Sainz heads Leclerc in Ferrari 1-2 as Hamilton returns in FP2

Sainz, who is carrying a minimum 10-place grid penalty into Sunday’s race for exceeding power unit components, lowered the pace in FP2 with a 1m32.527s to outpace Leclerc by 0.101s. 

Max Verstappen, who holds a 38-point advantage over Leclerc in the championship, was half a second adrift in third place for Red Bull. 

The reigning world champion only completed a single push lap on Pirelli’s fastest soft tyre and complained about struggling with understeer in his RB18 through the first sector. 

George Russell was 0.764s off the pace in fourth, two tenths clear of Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton, who returned to action after sitting out of FP1 so that Nyck de Vries could complete one of Mercedes’ mandatory rookie practice outings for this season. 

Lando Norris once again finished as the fastest McLaren driver in sixth, ahead of AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly, who fumed over team radio after encountering traffic early in the session. 

“Who the f*** was that guy, is it his first day driving?” Gasly said in reference to Williams driver Alex Albon. 

Haas’ Kevin Magnussen was an encouraging eighth, with Daniel Ricciardo and Sergio Perez completing the rest of the top-10 order for McLaren and Red Bull respectively. 

Perez curiously ended up some 1.5s off the pace and a full second behind Red Bull teammate Verstappen, and only completed 16 laps during the hour-long session. 

Mick Schumacher avoided a potentially big crash in his Haas after a high-speed spin at Turn 11, having narrowly avoided the barriers.